Learning a precision sport such as firearm marksmanship, archery marksmanship, or billiards marksmanship typically requires many hours—possibly hundreds or even thousands of hours of repetitive practice. Such a lengthy process may be due to the nature of how kinematic actions involved in a marksmanship task are recorded in the human brain. There are theories that muscle movements are first recorded in and/or encoded by the premotor cortex of the brain (an area of the motor cortex lying within the frontal lobe of the brain just anterior to the primary motor cortex), and then consolidated and stored in the brain's primary motor cortex, typically during rest or sleep. Muscle memory training thus may involve continuing evolution of neural processes after stopping practicing a desired precision sport task.
In this description and the claims attached thereto, the terms marksmanship and related terms, such as a marksman being a person skilled in marksmanship, are used herein to denote skills required in any precision sport that requires aiming, firing, and hitting a target in a desired manner, and therefore is not limited to shooting a firearm. The term includes for example firearm marksmanship, archery marksmanship, and billiards marksmanship.
Existing kinematic training devices are known that focus on gross motor development—long kinematic sequences that involve multiple muscle groups and joint rotations lasting even as long as several seconds. Such devices analyze the motions and provided feedback for a complete motion such as a golf swing or baseball pitch. Use of such a training device may require the user to apply cognitive skills to interpret the results and then to use additional cognitive skills to process the movement modifications being coached. This type of explicit learning of the elements of a gross motor skill could tend to break down when the user is under pressure. This type of learning also may even increase the time it takes for a user to learn or improve a skill. The so-called Conscious Processing Hypothesis predicts that users require more neuronal processing to control explicitly-learned movements under pressure and that such pressure takes away available resources for processing task and goal stimuli required for the situation. Additionally, Conscious Processing may cause a delay in learning kinematic sequences. The Conscious Processing Hypothesis is a self-focus theory which suggests that pressure situations may raise anxiety and heighten self-consciousness about performing successfully. This heightened self-consciousness may cause performers to attempt to control previously automated skilled behavior consciously. In doing so, the control may disrupt the fluency associated with expert performance. By ‘reinvesting’ in the knowledge base that supports performance, the process may cause a breakdown of automated movement units into a more consciously controlled sequence of smaller, separate units. This process may slow performance and may create opportunity for error at each transition between units.
The approaches described in this BACKGROUND section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section. Similarly, issues identified with respect to one or more approaches should not assume to have been recognized in any prior art on the basis of this section, unless otherwise indicated.